What caused Gandhi’s insatiable bloodlust in Civilization

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Though the most recent entry in Sid Meier’s venerable strategy franchise, Civilization: Beyond Earth, leaves behind historical figures in favor of a fictional sci-fi future, fans of the series will never be able to forget a certain historical figure and just how much a complete jerk he was. Though Civilization prides itself on presenting history in a relatively accurate light, Gandhi — arguably the human being most synonymous with peace — has always been a warmongering jerk throughout the series.

If you have ever played Civilization, you’re very aware that Gandhi tends to be the first to use nuclear weapons, and spares no expense on wiping your civilization off the map. You probably always thought you were crazy — how could a series that prides itself on historical accuracy portray Gandhi so wrong? Well, you’ll be happy to know that both your sanity and Civilization’s historical integrity aren’t at fault. Instead, a bug’s to blame.

In the earlier Civs, leaders are given a set of attributes that dictate their behavior. One such attribute is a number scale associated with aggressiveness. Gandhi was given the lowest number possible, a rating of 1. However, when a civilization adopted democracy, it granted a civilization -2 to opponent aggression levels. This sent Gandhi’s rating of 1 into the negative, which swung it back around to 255 — the highest possible rating available, and thus, the infamous warmonger Gandhi was born.

This cyclical aggression scale was fixed in later versions of the game, but Gandhi wasn’t totally cured of his bloodlust. The team fixed Gandhi’s aggression rating, but as an Easter egg paying homage to the earlier aggressive versions of Gandhi, ramped his nuke rating through the roof. So, while it may be difficult to push Gandhi over the edge, he goes from zero to nuclear option once you do.